Blackburn Rovers 1-1 ManUtd: Another Week of Worry
April 26, 2008
Like many, I was worried all week. The pleasure of Wigan’s late equaliser on Tuesday had been buried in the news of Chelsea’s win at Goodison Park on Thursday. Last year’s 1-0 was the only league win we have enjoyed at Ewood Park since 1998 and this year Blackburn are enjoying their best season for a while. They are also officially the league’s second most dirty side; nobody has collected more red cards. This was never going to be easy.
History will make little of Saturday’s drama. The record will just have a 1-1 draw between Blackburn and United on the way either to Chelsea’s amazing last-ditch theft of the title, or to United’s retention of it. As we all know, that tells only a tiny fragment of the truth and I am afraid there are likely to be another 280-odd minutes of gut-twisting agony before we are out of this one way or the other. It is usually so.
Where he could, Ferguson went for experience in his team selection. Kuszczak played in goal but with the return of Vidic, the defence was back to strength and Scholes and Carrick were in the middle, flanked by Ronaldo and Giggs. Rooney and Tevez were together again up front. As usual this was only Blackburn’s second full house of the season; the reported 8,000 or so United fans were loud and impressive throughout the match. Oh to have been there.
United began well; confident, no real sign of nerves, passing the ball. Yet there were only two clear chances in the first twenty minutes and the first of them fell to Blackburn. Paul Scholes’ attempted clearance led to a chance for Jason Roberts. He was stopped by Kuszczak, whose challenge at first glance looked illegal but in fact the goalkeeper kicked the ball away before the collision and did his best to avoid any unnecessary contact.
The United chance came when Rooney’s great run on the right ended with a peach of a cross for Tevez, who needed to sidefoot it home from a yard or two; he all but missed the ball completely.
The match was transformed when Blackburn scored. From a throw-in on the United right Roberts challenged Vidic and Ferdinand. I don’t think the ball touched Roberts, but somehow it bounced off and between the two defenders and rolled invitingly across the goal where Roque Santa Cruz cracked it in confidently inside the far post from about twelve yards and it was 20 minutes 0-1 and Chelsea fans, Scousers and ABUs were dancing with delight in pubs and bars up and down the country.
United seemed to become nervy; Blackburn harried and worked and tackled hard and sometimes illegally, and delayed at all dead balls. This led to a scrappy forty minutes, either side of the interval. United got nothing from the officials.
In the first half alone there was a catalogue of decisions; a wrong offside decision against Tevez when he was clean through on the half hour; an amazing failure by the linesman to see that the ball was at least a clear foot out of play, which led to a period of sustained Blackburn pressure; and a trip by Reid on Rooney in the corner of the area for which we should have had a penalty (Wayne made it easy for the referee to refuse by deciding to dive and then had one his red mist tantrums; I hope he knows he’ll be sent off if he does that in Barcelona).
Kuszczak palmed over a long distance scorcher from Bentley then, just before half time, Ronaldo produced a beautifully athletic textbook header from Carrick’s corner, which was powerful but too close to Brad Friedel, who saved photogenically.
The bad patch, such as it was, continued after half time. Blackburn had come out to hang on to what they had, which is fair enough. Nani had come on for Giggs but it was a full five minutes before he even got a touch, such was United’s apparent inability to impose themselves.
Physically we were not intimidated. Wes Brown dished out a couple of Blackburn tackles; it’s just that they have five or six players who have to make good the gap in class by playing that way, and we only have one. After an hour, Hughes’ tactics were working, United were going nowhere and the dynamics of the season were such that a second goal out of the blue and our title would be disappearing down the tubes.
When Santa Cruz headed well over in the 66th minute, however, it was their first attempt of the half; they had one more, when Pedersen beat Scholes and Brown too easily and dribbled cleverly down the left only to shoot across the face of the goal.
At the other end United had begun to apply the pressure. Ronaldo picked up a careless Reid clearance and from way outside the area let fly a shot which beat Friedel and hit the far post. But as if bad luck and the referee weren’t enough, as United picked up the tempo Friedel turned in a blinding performance.
United kept playing the football, Blackburn were forced further and further back. Scholes, who had looked vulnerable earlier, was lording the centre of the pitch, Blackburn could hardly get the ball out of their own half. Rooney was taken out by a belly-high boot from Nelson and played on when he might have come off. Bent over and wincing every time he was off the ball, he showed spirit by doing all he could when play got near him, and was heavily involved in the action.
With fifteen minutes to go he set up a great moment from the left, Ronaldo was tackled from behind as he went through but before anybody could get excited about a possible penalty (which it probably wasn’t) Tevez was onto it and his shot was brilliantly reached by Friedel, who then had the wit to twist and fall on the ball as it crept over the line.
O’Shea came on for Brown. Nani put Rooney clean through with a great ball; Friedel pulled off another save. Carrick headed a ball from a left wing corner which Emerton played with his elbow in a crowded area. This was a big decision. What Emerton did was quite deliberate; Styles was either unsighted or blind.
The pressure was unrelenting; we got a free kick which Nani took quickly, Tevez was through but the referee demanded a retake. Nani flighted this one in wickedly and O’Shea got a prod; somehow Friedel, travelling the wrong way, recovered to get something in the way and keep it out. Just when you had resigned yourself to the fact that this was not going to be our day, we got given a corner that should have been a goal kick.
Nani took it from the left, Paul Scholes rose to head it dangerously across the goal and there was Carlos Tevez, a couple of yards from the line jumping backwards and high to get his head to it and the ball was nestling into the corner and fans and players celebrating as if we had done more than win just another week of torture; 88 minutes 1-1. We might have won the match had Styles given the free kick when Tevez was fouled on the way through in added time.
It was a knuckle-grinding cracker of a match and though beforehand we all felt we needed to win, in the cold light of a weekday morning I see it far from being an opportunity lost, but a great performance and a great result. We were playing against luck and, it seemed, the referee, and for the third match in a row we showed the mettle of champions to take the situation by the scruff of the neck and through sheer determination and effort gain what was being denied us.
“They don’t ever accept they’re beaten” Mark Hughes was quoted in The Times “and when they are, they don’t say they’ve lost, they say they ran out of time.” Much as I’d like it to be otherwise, it’s Ferguson that Hughsie is describing, not United. It wasn’t that way before he came and it probably won’t be that way a decade after he’s gone.
But he’s still here; Stamford Bridge here we come. How much more can I take? Miracle of miracles, I’ve got a ticket; it’s so much easier to share the tension than it is to ulcerate alone in front of the television.
Copyright © Paul James
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